


Joyride

by karrenia_rune



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Episode Tag, Male-Female Friendship, Prompt Fic, community: 100situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The maiden voyage of the "Dragonfly."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joyride

Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Fireworks Productions and Tribune Entertainment; it is not mine. The story references events from the 2nd season episode "Harper 2.0".

"Joyride" by Karrenia

 

Several weeks had passed since Harper's near-fatal encounter with the bounty hunter Marshall Yeager and the lingering nightmares had finally come to an end. 

He still worked in the machine shop and still dedicated several hours of his busy schedule to the various half-finished projects lying scattered around the spacious machine shop like the debris of an aborted battlefield, with one glaring exception. 

That exception intrigued Beka Valentine to the point where she would check with the ship's avatar and the computer AI as to when Harper was not going to be present before going over and inspecting the primitive flying machine. She circled around and around it, wondering what it would take to make it fly. 

Harper had begun building the flying machine like so much else in the machine shop when he had the entire Perseid library database downloaded into his data port and directly into his brain. 

It was a good brain, but Harper was human, and all that informational data overload was simply too much for one individual to handle. 

However, that was not concerned Beka at the moment. 

She had debated on whether or not she wanted to approach Harper on getting him to complete the flying machine and make it operational. All of her life, as much as she can recall anyway, she had always felt happiest and the most exhilarating freedom when flying. Up until now she had only flown through the vacuum of space, never in the atmosphere of a planet, or in this case, the cavernous space of a launch bay.

The intent and the feeling was very similar. 

Seamus Harper obviously felt much the same when he had begun building this flying machine.

While she contemplated on how best to phrase her half-formed idea Harper entered the machine shop his arrival announced by the clinking of the tool belt he wore around his waist and the clunk of his boots as they hit the floor. "Beka? he began.

"I have an idea." 

"Oh, what is it?", he asked as he looked up to look her in the eye.

"I think we need to take this machine of yours for a little test run," she replied.

His reaction was not at all what Beka had expected, there was a momentary of awkward silence the look on his face would almost be what she would term comical if he had not been so pale and the rims around his blue eyes shading towards a dark ring like the circles around the old-Earth animal called a raccoon. 

She knew that Seamus Harper could not remain silent for much longer so Beka patiently waited him out. 

"Are you out of your mind?" he finally asked.:

"Just where on the ship do you think Dylan will allow you to fly this bird. hmm? And if and when that happens, do you think I will let you just waltz out of here without me?"

"In short, I'll take that as a 'yes." Beka smiled and strode over to give Harper a big hug and when she released him he stepped back wiped off the dust of the flying machine with a rag that he held in his hand and then threw the rag down. "Have I told you lately that you really are impossible?" he asked.

"Not lately," she quipped.

Harper turned around and threw his hands up in the air, "Well, whom am I to argue with that logic?"

 

Inside the launch bay the newly christened "Dragonfly" idled, its engines on standby while Beka, a stickler from the moment she had been old enough to know how and where all the equipment on an aircraft was located automatically ran through a pre-flight checklist. Convincing Captain Dylan Hunt to allow them to go through with their experiment had not been as difficult as she had anticipated. 

According to Harper he would have preferred to test the completed flying machine in the actual atmosphere of a planet, but as Dylan had pointed out, at least if they crashed and burned inside of the ship's spacious launch bay at least they would have a safety net system already in place. 

As Tyr Anazazi had tersely pointed in his inevitable Nietzschean way- they would not have to search for their mortal remains should something go drastically wrong with the experiment, although he had helped them get the flying machine to the cargo bay and then helped them left it up and onto the launch mechanism.

Beka allowed herself a smile half-smile then turned to Harper and insisted that she be the one allowed to pilot the craft. Harper grinned and agreed, although, to Beka's admittedly paranoid way of thinking, he had given in way too easily. "Okay, did you bring the bottle of champagne like we agreed?"

"Huh?"

"Not to drink, you moronic genius." Beka laughed, "I figured you would know about this old Earth custom where officials or heads of state used to christen new ships by breaking open a brand new bottle of wine before the first launch." Beka thought about it a few seconds and then she said: "What say, we only use half the bottle,  
after the first successful test flight, we'll drink the other half, what do you say?"

"I say, I think we're both completely out of our gourds, but what the hell, let's do it!" Harper reached down to fumble through the innumerable pockets in his eye-bleeding orange pants and came up with a bottle of champagne. "I was wondering when you would get around to asking about this. Okay, what do I do?

"Come over here, give the ship a name and then break open the bottle, just be careful not to let the whole thing spill out of it."

Harper walked towards the flying craft, craned his neck to in order to see the best angle, then stood on his tiptoes, stretched his arm up and uncorking the bottle, whanged it against the shiny red and white hull, decrying the name of the ship, "as the "Dragonfly." Darting a mischievous glance back over his shoulder to where Beka stood full of nervous energy to get on with things, she responded by giving him an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up sign.

"Okay, let's get this bird in the air!" Harper excitedly shouted. "I've gone through all the pre-flight checks, and it all checks out. How come I gotta ride shotgun?"

"Because I'm the best, only qualified pilot we've got, and the most important reason," she grinned, "Because I said so, that's why."

"Silly of me, to even ask. All right, have it your way."

Seated at the cockpit of the newly christened "Dragonfly" Beka activated the controls, having read through Harper's rather densely scrawled notes that he kept while building the flying machine, enough to know what each of the levers, gears, and flashing lights meant and what each of them was meant for. 

She could feel the force of the engines coming to life and as it forced to lean back in her seat, In the passenger side, Harper had already belted himself in and had his eyes closed. Beka, couldn't help herself, she grinned and let out an ear-piercing laugh, 'this is going to be fun." 

Over the ships' public address system she heard Rommie's voice acknowledge their release from the docking clamps and then just as suddenly they were airborne.

At first Beka was not accustomed to the lighter craft beneath her seat and her hands, the "Dragonfly" had obviously been intended for atmospheric flying through the air of a planet, not the for space-flight, but Beka Valentine knew more than the most might care to admit about flying, and she soon got an instinctive feel of it. She pulled back on the throttle, adjusted their air and velocity.

The Dragonfly soon leveled off to an even keel and stopped flailing about. "You can open your eyes now, Harper," said Beka as she glanced out the glass windows of the cockpit. 

"We're airborne?" It actually worked?"

"Check it out."

"Wow," Harper whispered as he glanced out through the forward windows of the cockpit and through the left and right windows. "Wow, indeed," Beka whispered and then said, "We might need to get an extra bottle of champagne when we land."

" You know what they say," Harper returned her smile with one of his own. "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. Oh, I'm glad you talked me into doing this."

"Anytime, partner, anytime." Beka smiled


End file.
